Bruce Charlton's Notions

In her Introduction to The Image of the City, a collection of essays by Charles Williams, Anne Ridler states that 'At the centre of Williams's teaching lies this dogma, that the whole universe is to be known as good.'

She then goes on to describe how Williams lived in a state of underlying misery - that he said he would have declined the gift of life, if offered; that he had a death-wish, that he did not hope for eternal life but would prefer everlasting unconsciousness, that the world lived in a web of distress, that the life of young people was hell... and so on,

The question is how Charles Williams went from a core conviction that everything is good, to a life of such total distress.

I think the answer is quite simple, which is that Charles Williams really believed, really lived by, the idea that reality was outside time, that all times were simultaneous - that what applied now applied forevermore. He was a profound Platonist - in believing that time, change, decay and corruption were superficial - the reality was time-less, unchanging.

Many, many Christians have said such things throughout history - but few have really believed them: Charles Williams was one of the few - and he was intelligent enough to find the implications inescapable and deeply contradictory.

If Life is good - and this is Life - and real Life is eternally itself... then this must also be good - and it seems terrible.

In my understanding, Charles Williams was a victim of the poison of what might be termed Classical Metaphysics in Christianity: the kind which says that life IS good - always has been and always will be. Most people are too emotionally shallow or too lacking in philosophical rigour to feel what Charles Williams felt as the implications of mainstream, standard, Christian theology.

Williams could never find reassurance, or relief from this state; because he was correct - the implications flowed from the assumptions; and the implications were tragic. The life and resurrection of Christ was, by this account, tragic - as revealed in Williams's most heart-felt essay The Cross where he concludes that the thing, the only thing, which makes the underlying reality of a good universe to be bearable, is that God also and voluntarily submitted to its justice and suffered its agonies when he became Christ.

If that is not despair - it is a mere - unconvincing - whisker away.

And how often, how usual, has been this tragic interpretation of Christianity the prevailing emotion among the deepest thinkers?

And what a contrast this has been to the un-philosophical and optimistic 'Christianity' of Christ himself, of countless 'simple' Christians, and the 'good news' of the gospels.

The difference is, I think, quite simple - and it is related to time. The simple, commonsense Christian - the non-Platonist, the non-philosopher - naturally regards Christianity as being about a future state of good - not an eternal good, in which all times are and will be equal.

So 'simple' Christianity is about God as an aim, not about good as an actuality; and Christian hope has been based on faith that the state of good will happen, not that good has already happened.

Sophisticated Christian theology superficially seems to be positive and optimistic in its claims of Heaven being here-and-now-and-always because of the un-reality of time - but its philosophical implications are dark, miserable and pessimistic (and difficult/ impossible to square with the good news of Christ) - in that ultimately things can never be better than now. And if, as is the case, we cannot see this now, then there is no reason to assume things can ever become better.

This is a false distortion of the plain Christian message of hope based on the optimistic conviction that time is real. Because time is real - that is linear, sequential; things that seem bad now may really be bad (we don't need to assume that bad-seeming is 'in reality' good), but bad things really can get better than they are now, and the Christian faith is that we know by revelation  that things really will get better.

In sum, Charles Williams is a better, a more rigorous, a more honest philosopher than most Christian theologians - and he lived and experienced the consequences of his theology. Since these consequences were so dark and despairing, the life of Charles Williams in relation to his theology makes a reductio ad absurdum of Classical Theology: i.e. the consequences of Classical Theology demonstrate its erroneous assumptions.

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I have been (again) reading Charles Williams (1886-1945) - indeed, I have been reading "C.W" off-and-on since about 1987 (stimulated by Humphrey Carpenter's biography The Inklings).

A major factor in my returning again and again to reading C.W was my failure to understand him and the conviction that I must be missing something important.

I now feel that I understand Williams better than before.

And I am prepared to share this hard-won understanding with my blog readership...

(smiles, looks quizzical, and continues...)

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This essay by Barbara Newman of Northwestern University entitled "Charles Williams and the Companions of the Co-inherence" was extremely valuable - I just found it last week:

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/spiritus/v009/9.1.newman.html

'Read the whole thing' as they say, but one interesting argument was that C.W's decade of intensive training in ritual magic may have been the key factor which enabled him, on the one hand, to attain the concentrated effort that allowed him to accomplish such a lot of writing in the face of many other duties and distractions; and on the other hand to generate a spiritual outlook, stillness and mental focus which amplified his already considerable 'charisma' to a remarkable extent.

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C.W produced poetry, plays, literary criticism & reviews, novels, and theology.

At the end of the day I would regard only the novels and theology as being of interest.

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The poems are bad: indeed very bad.

They are bad because they are inept - so much is seen from the early poetry. And the late poems are very bad because they try to disguise their ineptitude with pretentious technique and vocabulary.

This much may be inferred on internal evidence, but is confirmed by learning how he discussed the writing of poetry with his confidante: his main concern was a striving for originality, which is clearly not the way that a poet talks of such matters.

That people such as C.S. Lewis and T.S. Eliot highly-valued Williams poetry is evidence of 1. Tin ears and 2. C.W's immense charisma.

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Williams poetic plays are impossible - beyond bad. They must have been utter torture for the audience.

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The reviews and criticism are OK.

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The novels are very interesting; but they are inept, and at a very basic level: it is very difficult to follow what is going-on, who is speaking, what is happening and even what has happened.

Indeed, among novels that I have actually finished and re-read, I would say that Williams are by far the worst written: less competent than the worst pulp fiction.

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The theology is also very badly written.

At first I thought this was because C.W was dealing with profound matters, but this can't be right, since much more spiritually-advanced people (who are much less famous than Williams as writers) are considerably more lucid.

Fr Seraphim Rose for instance, or many other Orthodox Christian spiritual writers such as the anonymous author of Way of a Pilgrim, or St John of Kronstadt; or Roman Catholics such as Pascal, or Aquinas...

But, really, almost anyone is easier to understand than C.W.

The reason is is simple and twofold: firstly, Williams was an inept writer and secondly - on top of that - he was deliberately obscure.

C.W certainly has some interesting things to say, theologically. Interesting, but surely wrong!

Once you have reached the bottom, his main ideas seem not just wrong, but obviously - almost absurdly - wrong.


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C.W is supposedly a Christian theologian (and is regarded as a great one by many including the present Archbishop of Canturbury - although the present +Cantaur seems so brilliant as to be able to read anything into anything...) .

Yet Williams has many bizarre ideas that are (surely?) at odds with Christianity. Sometimes C.W seems not to believe in the divinity of Jesus - which makes him non-Christian.

Apparently he did not believe in the desirability of resurrection, but would prefer death to be an end and a sleep - which means he denies Christian hope.

He believes that all time is literally simultaneous, which denies any direction to history and any meaning to human agency.

(For instance, a modern person can - in Williams' world - accept and thereby reduce the sufferings of people in the past. Including (yes, really) alleviating the sufferings of Christ on the Cross.)

I accept that C.W was much more intelligent and well-informed than I - but this is just nonsense.

And C.W writes frequently and at length of a Way of Affirmation which is supposed to be an equally valid alternative spiritual path to holiness as the ascetic Way of Negation as practiced by the Saints.

Yet Williams' prime exhibit, his only strong and successful instance of a Way of Affirmation is the fictional world depicted by Dante's poetry of love - and Williams provides not a single real life example of a single person ever attaining sanctity by the Way of Affirmation.  

Very strange.

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Williams' vast productivity becomes easier to understand - as a writer he had very low standards.

I am no literary genius (as readers of this blog would willingly testify!) but I would have been ashamed to release such badly-written stuff as Williams poured-out.

With Williams it is not just haste, but I can only presume he had no ability objectively to evaluate his own writing and recognize whether it 'worked' or not.

Or maybe he could see that it did not work, and strove to disguise this obvious fact with deliberate obscurity.

If so, he succeeded with many people, including this writer: it took me a long time to be sure that something like this was going-on.

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What is indeed remarkable about Charles Williams is now how he managed to write so much but how he managed to publish so much!

A second minor miracle is that so much of his ouvre remains in print: indeed that any of it remains in print is fairly remarkable.

At any rate - and despite my many and serious reservations about Williams writing ability and motivations - I am pleased that so much of what he wrote (and was written about him) is still available.

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I remain fascinated by Williams as a personality, his effect on other people.

In particular, C.W exemplified in a strong and pure form the horror so many people feel at the shallowness, the banality of mundane worldly existence and the countervailing craving so many people feel for a life in contact with a higher and more real order of things.

Williams' novels depict this in a way which is exciting, inspiring and appealing .

And this was how C.W made other people feel - his friends like Lewis and Tolkien, and his circle of disciples and devotees.

From Williams people got a sense of being in touch with occult reality, a deeper or higher reality; and a stronger sense of being alive and aware.

It seems to me that this was much more a matter of the power of magic than the holiness and love of Christianity - still, for many people and up to a point (beyond which point it became demonic and exploitative), Williams' spiritual charisma could be a step in the right direction: away from materialist nihilism and towards meaning and purpose.

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Unfortunately, I cannot find an online copy of Charles Williams essay "What the cross means to me" - which is published as The Cross in the selected essays entitled The Image of the City edited by Anne Ridler, 1958. 

But I have seen several scholars represent it as Williams deepest, most heartfelt and most characteristic essay on theology - the fruit of a life-time of study and intense reflection on Christianity.

It is a rigorous and unsparing, indeed shocking, following-through of the implications of classical theology - and God's omnipotence. Here are some edited excerpts:

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The original act of creation can be believed to be good and charitable; it is credible that the Almighty God should deign to create beings to share His Joy. It is credible that He should deign to increase their Joy by creating them with the power of free will so that their joy should be voluntary. It is certain that if they have the power of choosing Joy in Him they must have the power of choosing the opposite of Joy in Him. 

But it is not credible that a finite choice ought to result in an infinite distress... that the Creator should deliberately maintain and sustain His created universe in a state of infinite distress as a result of the choice.

This is the law which His will imposed upon His creation. It need not have been.

Our distress then is no doubt our gratuitous choice, but it is also His. He could have willed us not to be after the Fall. He did not.

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Now the distress of the creation is so vehement and prolonged, so tortuous and torturing, that even naturally it is revolting to our sense of justice, much more supernaturally. We are instructed that He contemplates, from His infinite felicity, the agonies of His creation, and deliberately maintains them in it. The whole creation groaneth and travaileth together. 

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Williams confronts head-on the implication that (in its classical theological interpretation) Christianity attributes all the evils of the world to God, and the vast and (it is said) infinitely-prolonged suffering of creation is to be attributed to God as well. 

(In the sense that the sufferings in Hell of those who have chosen wrongly are here assumed to be infinitely prolonged.) 

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For Williams, it was not ultimately acceptable to attribute evil and suffering to Satan and demonic activity - since although the 'War in Heaven' was absolutely real to Charles Williams (indeed a matter of direct daily experience), this situation of spiritual conflict between good and evil had also been set-up and sustained by God, and was equally His responsibility. 

This is merely the stage-setting of Williams argument. The focus and conclusion of the essay is that despite all that can be said against the Christian concept of God; at least, alone of all gods, the Christian God subjected himself (i.e. Jesus Christ) to that same justice which He established. This self-infliction of divine law is (but only this, and only just, we sense) regarded as sufficient to justify Christian justice. 




But the sense of outrage at the nature of this divine justice is there, and is the most striking thing about the essay.

The sense that God, surely, 'ought to' have annihilated the souls of those who chose against Him; rather than maintaining them eternally in torment.

"He could have willed us not to be after the Fall. He did not."

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This essay of William's made a strong impact on me, because he follows through the implications of divine omnipotence so thoroughly and unsparingly - for example, pointing out that (according to mainstream Christian theology) the tree from which Christ's cross was made, and the nails driven into him - the instruments of torture - were, from the beginning, brought into existence in full knowledge of the purpose to which they would certainly be used. 

Williams implications are, I think, a correct, honest and necessary following-through of the implications of that standard, mainstream, classical philosophical Christian theology which goes back to the early church Fathers - very early in the history of the Christian church; but not back to its very beginning and the time of the Apostles: there is little or nothing of this kind of theology clearly or explicitly recorded in the New Testament.  

I therefore now read Williams essay as a reductio ad absurdum of standard, mainstream, classical philosophical Christian theology. And since, although this type of theology has been usual for maybe 1800 years of the history of Christianity, and among many of its greatest exponents - and it not therefore to be written-off lightly - it is not a necessary part of Christianity; because we don't see it in the Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles or the accounts in the Epistles. 

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So, I interpret Williams great essay as an unflinching and insightful and true account of Christianity as it emerged in the form which - historically - became dominant. And Williams found that he could, albeit only just, endorse Christianity thus emerged and conceived.

But Williams did not - here - consider the possibility that these major difficulties were historically contingent, that they were additional-to, and not an intrinsic part-of, the mode of Christianity described in the Gospels and for the Apostolic era.

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The Good News is that a rigorous and unflinching Christian does not have to accept the very-nearly-intolerable situation described by Williams. 

For what is to me, clinching evidence; just contrast the (joyous, hopeful) feeling you get from reading about and thinking about the life and message of Jesus Christ in the Gospels... with the bleak and transfixing horror from contemplating the implications of  standard, mainstream, classical philosophical Christian theology with its model of salvation-damnation and its description of Hell. 

Why Williams did not consider that the fault lay in later developments of theology rather than Christianity itself- or did not take it seriously - is a topic for another essay. But to reject standard, mainstream, classical philosophical Christian theology and to return to the plain and commonsense mode of thinking of most of the New Testament seems to me like a fair and proper and rigorous way-out from the impasse Williams described so memorably and chillingly. 

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From 'The Cross' in The Image of the City, and other essays; by Charles Williams (edited by Anne Ridler, 1958). Excerpted from page 136:

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Easter... began in the Cross. 

I say 'in' rather than 'on', for by the time it began He had become, as it were, the very profoundest Cross to Himself... The Cross was He and He was the Cross. 

His will had maintained, or rather His will in His Father's will had maintained, a state of affairs among men of which physical crucifixion was at once a part and a perfect symbol. 

This state of things He inexorably proposed to himself to endure; say, rather, that from the beginning He had been Himself at bottom both the endurance and the thing endured. 

This had been true everywhere in all men; it was now true of Himself apart from all men; it was local and particular...

He was stretched, He was bled, He was nailed, He was thrust into, but not a bone of  Him was broken...

It was the Cross which sustained Him, but He also sustained the Cross. 

He had, through the years, exactly preserved the growth of the thorn and of the wood, and had indued with energy the making of the nails and the sharpening of the spear; say, through the centuries He had maintained vegetable and mineral in the earth for this. 

His providence overwatched it to no other end, as it overwatches so many instruments and intentions of cruelty then and now.

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One of Charles Williams most important contributions as a theologian seems to have been to clarify, explain and emphasize the idea of co-inherence - and its related ideas of exchange and substitution.


The concept is that we are members one of another, and with Christ, and therefore can substitute for one another, for example in the exchange of suffering. 


As when I agree to take on your anxieties, and your anxieties might be taken on by me - or by a third party; so that we 'bear one anothers' burdens'. 


This also links to the taunt of Christ on the Cross - He saved others himself he cannot save" - this is assumed  to be a general observation about mankind - to be saved we must save others, and be saved by others. 

This makes the main plot of Descent into Hell, and features in the mature theology of He Came Down From Heaven and Descent of the Dove. 


But Williams pushed this idea too far, in my opinion. 


In Descent into Hell, especially, he detached it from Christian life, and made it a kind of technology - almost a magical therapeutic practice for the alleviation of anxiety and pain. 


Williams biographer - Alice Mary Hadfield, says she had a long running disagreement with Williams on precisely this point - the extent to which exchange and substitution could be practiced apart from Christianity: she said it couldn't - he said it could.


This strikes me as a residue of C.W's fascination with ritual magic as a young man, and his decade long involvement with A.E Waite and the 'Golden Dawn' movement.


Perhaps it was things like this which made CS Lewis say in a letter to his brother, tongue in cheek, that for all his sanctity (which Lewis acknowledged and appreciated more than almost anybody) there was something 'combustible' about Williams  - the sense that in another era he would have been burned for heresy, and (in a sense...) deserve it!


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Although Charles Williams was superficially a highly sociable man, full of energy and apparent optimism; deep down he was far more pessimistic than his freinds C.S Lewis and JRR Tolkien.


This is revealed in the late, great flowering of theology in the last decade of his life, and most of all the essay "What the cross means to me" (published as The Cross in the selected essays entitled The Image of the City edited by Anne Ridler, 1958).


Here are some excerpts, in order but re-paragraphed and re-punctuated:


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The original act of creation can be believed to be good and charitable; it is credible that the Almighty God should deign to create beings to share His Joy.


It is credible that He should deign to increase their Joy by creating them with the power of free will so that their joy should be voluntary.


It is certain that if they have the power of choosing Joy in Him they must have the power of choosing the opposite of Joy in Him. 


But it is not credible that a finite choice ought to result in an infinite distress...


...that the Creator should deliberately maintain and sustain His created universe in a state of infinite distress as a result of the choice.


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This is the law which His will imposed upon His creation. It need not have been.


Our distress then is no doubt our gratuitous choice, but it is also His. 


He could have willed us not to be after the Fall. 


He did not.


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Now the distress of the creation is so vehement and prolonged, so tortuous and torturing, that even naturally it is revolting to our sense of justice, much more supernaturally. 


We are instructed that He contemplates, from His infinite felicity, the agonies of His creation, and deliberately maintains them in it.


The whole creation groaneth and travaileth together. 


*


Williams conclusion is that at least, alone of all gods, the Christian God subjected himself to the justice which He established. But the sense of outrage is there.


The sense that God 'ought to' have annihilated the souls of those who chose against Him; rather than maintaining them eternally in torment.


(If that is indeed what happens.)


For Williams, the bedrock of human existence was apparently as described above: finite choice leading to infinite distress; mitigated only by a God who suffered along with His creation.


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CS Lewis may have had Williams arguments in mind when he wrote the 'Hell' chapter of The Problem of Pain (1940) - excerpts: 

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In an earlier chapter it was admitted that the pain which alone could rouse the bad man to a knowledge that all was not well, might also lead to a final and unrepented rebellion. And it has been admitted throughout that man has free will and that all gifts to him are therefore two-edged. From these premises it follows directly that the Divine labour to redeem the world cannot be certain of succeeding as regards every individual soul. Some will not be redeemed.

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Reading McMurrin's comparative historical analysis of Christian theology (see reference below) was fascinating in many ways - one of which was relating to the Omnipotence attributed to God.

It is clear that having a God who can do anything instantly and directly and without any restrictions leads to serious theological problems: the most serious of which is 'the problem of pain' - in particular the problem of the extremity of human suffering.

http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2011/09/bedrock-of-reality-according-to-charles.html

The original act of creation can be believed to be good and charitable; it is credible that the Almighty God should deign to create beings to share His Joy. It is credible that He should deign to increase their Joy by creating them with the power of free will so that their joy should be voluntary. It is certain that if they have the power of choosing Joy in Him they must have the power of choosing the opposite of Joy in Him. But it is not credible that a finite choice ought to result in an infinite distress...

From What the Cross Means to Me, by Charles Williams. 

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In this essay, I think that William's is pointing out that while it seems reasonable and right that Men should suffer, there seems no reason - if God is both omnipotent and Good - why some Men should suffer so much.

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Many people feel that if God can do anything, yet allows extreme suffering, that such a God is not Good.

And if God is not Good, then He is not God - therefore they do not believe in God. 

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But if God is wholly Good but not omnipotent, if God's power to effect Good is great but not complete - then this problem loses its force. Such a God is doing His best, but constrained by the reality of the situation.

This is, to a common sense reading, precisely the depiction of the Old Testament God. What seems to be described is a person who is always striving for Good but is constrained by the situation - in particular by the free choice of his people which can be influenced but not compelled; but also by time, and having to work in the material world.

While a few specific verses can be interpreted as, perhaps, implying omnipotence - this is certainly not the impression given overall - is it? The Old Testament God is a personality who does not make things happen except via the things of the world - and it is a reasonable inference that this God cannot make things happen except via the things of the world.

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So, the bleg is this: what is the truly compelling evidence that God is specifically omnipotent - rather than ('merely') extremely powerful.

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My suspicion is that the evidence is metaphysical, rather than scriptural - something we say God 'must be', something we assume a priori, rather than something we have been told by revelation.

My guess (from reading McMurrin) is that omnipotence is an attribute, a metaphysical assumption, derived from Classical Philosophy and read back into Christianity (and Judaism).

I don't imagine that Abraham, Isaac and Jacob would have assumed that God was omnipotent in the abstract later sense of instantly and directly being able to do anything at all; but rather that their God was extremely powerful, indeed by far the most powerful of all entities in reality (i.e. the most powerful of the 'gods' - i.e. of supernatural beings).

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(I suppose A,I & J would not want to discuss the limits of God's power - just as one would avoid discussing the limits of his power with an absolute monarch. But neither did they seem to assume anything along the lines that everything could be set perfectly right in the world by God's instantaneously-active will re-arranging the nature of reality. That God worked through the world, constrained by the world, seems integral to the relationship between God and the Prophets and seems to be embedded in the very nature of the Old Testament.) 

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So, could it be that the apparently insoluble 'problem of pain' is a consequence of the abstract extremism of the concept of omnipotence: a concept which is both alien to common sense, and also fundamentally incomprehensible - something that can be described, but not felt from the inside.

The problem of pain is therefore perhaps insoluble only because omnipotence is humanly-meaningless - an unnecessary, and later-added philosophical abstraction through which we later Christians are insisting upon trying to interpret Christianity.

Yet maybe real, living Christianity never has regarded God in this way - because for us to Love God and have a relationship with him in time and mortality, excludes the deadly abstraction of omnipotence. 

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Reference:
http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/sterling-m-mcmurrin-theological.html  

Note added: Omnipotence is an aspect of the monistic world view - but not necessary in a pluralistic world view (as comes through in William James philosophy). If we assume that ultimate reality contains more than one thing, it contains God and 'stuff'-that-is-not-God. Nothing is more powerful than God, but there is (and always was) other stuff. Neither God nor stuff can be destroyed - both are everlasting. In a pluralistic metaphysic, God did not create from nothing (ex nihilo) but using the stuff which was coexistent with God. Therefore, God must sometimes achieve his goals via using the stuff - that is, God is constrained by the stuff. Such a metaphysic fits comfortably with the Old Testament, seems indeed naturally to follow from it; and the OT reveals to us the nature of God the Father and the history of his relationship with his People. Therefore, since the Bible is a unity, the pluralistic metaphysic is compatible with the New Testament. "With God all things are possible" thus can be taken to refer to aims, not mechanisms: to God all ends are possible, but the means by which they are attained are under constraint. Hence the linear, narrative structure of the Old Testament - uncontroversially, God works via stuff, and without violation of the free will of Men and Angels - but to the pluraristic metaphysic this indirect and time-bound method is by necessity, not by God's restraint from deploying instantaneous and direct action to attain his goals. Hence God's miracles are done via stuff and on a timescale; not by instant transformation of stuff. 

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Note: 'Early' means before 7 am.

I had four early morning walks during my recent family holiday to Oxford. Walking in Oxford can be marvellous - or else made disappointing by dense crowds, the intrusions of sturdy beggars, and the sense of being walled-out-from so many gems.

But if you pick your places and times, and have a pilgrim's purpose - all these problems may be circumvented - and depth and richness of experience will be your reward.

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1. Christ Church Meadows


I began by walking from Jericho, cutting across to St Giles, down the Broad and past the Radcliffe Camera (as featured in the Notion Club Papers) to the Magdalen end of the Meadows, looping around to the Christ Church end.

The Meadows are one of the loveliest spots in England when you have them to yourself on a summer morning. I men only one other person. There is the natural beauty of the river, and also looking across at the beauty of the old colleges lined-up across the top of the meadows, and reflecting on the fundamental spiritual health of early generations who built them.

I came back to Jericho via the canal from Hythe Bridge, and past numerous (some astonishingly scruffy) houseboats.

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2. The Parks and St Cross churchyard


The Parks are surrounded by the Science labs and research units of the university, and centred on the cricket grounds. They are very pleasant - especially at the far end where there is a view across the River Cherwell to summer pastures and the possibility of a diversion to really rural countryside.

Alternatively, from another corner of the Parks one can reach Mesopotamia - a narrow strip 'between two rivers' - actually a spit of land dividing the Cherwell. It was a favourite route for the Lewis brothers between the home in Headington Quarry and Magdalen College.

However, this day I went to St Cross Churchyard to visit the grave of Charles Williams (and Hugo Dyson and Kenneth Grahame). It is a gorgeously verdant, overgrown backwater - very quiet at this time of day.

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3. Port Meadow Willow Walk


This is a very pleasing narrow, streamside walk leading-out onto Port Meadow from Jericho. It goes to an excellent spot beside the River Thames, the rather OTT-named 'Rainbow Bridge' and a great view back across Port Meadow and out towards The Trout at Wolvercote (an Inklings pub).


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4. The suburbs of North Oxford


This might not have a wide appeal; but I had a wonderfully enjoyable Victorian suburban morning walk that began with visiting Tolkien's two houses in Northmoor Road in its route zig-zagged past broad leafy residential streets, most of the women's colleges, the Dragon School and into The Parks (again) via the Lady Margaret Hall entrance - crossing the dewy grass and ducking under trees next to the cricket square, and by various means to Blackwell’s bookshop.


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NOTE: The above photos of the places I walked were taken from Google Images - acknowledgement and thanks are due to the gifted photographers who made them.

Kenneth Grahame, author of The Wind in the Willows, is buried in Holywell cemetery, at the back of what was St. Cross church (now deconsecrated) near-by the Inklings Charles Williams and Hugo Dyson. I saw his modest and all-but neglected grave when visiting, and was moved to tears by the (almost illegible) phrase in the inscription ' who passed the river...'.

The Wind in the Willows is perhaps the oddest truly great book in children's literature. If you try to read it straight through, it comes across as a sequence of heterogeneous and disconnected episodes - some low comedy, some prose poems. There is no real consistency about it, even the animals seem to change size for one part to another (most of the time Toad is toad-sized - but also drives a car and passes himself off as a washerwoman).

But it is a great book, so none of this really matters - our job is to locate in it what is great, not to quibble over its inconsistencies, which clearly don't matter.

This book is one which has touched the heart of many - including AA Milne, Tolkien, and Jack and Warnie Lewis. For a certain type of English person, it is impossible to row a boat on a river, or walk through a snowy wood, or sit by a real fire in a kitchen - without recalling Wind in the Willows. The characters of Mole, Rat, Badger and Toad are archetypes.

The sense of yearning for, but  never quite touching, never quite getting-inside, a rural paradise of beauty and bliss is stronger in this than in any other work - what CS Lewis called Sehnsucht or Joy.

Kenneth Grahame was a very successful banker in the city of London, and the book is a product of that almost desperate wish to escape such a life and place, which most of us have felt at some time, or most of the time, since the industrial revolution. In Grahame's case it led him to write some early examples of neo-paganism (for example in the Pagan Papers essay collection).

If you have not read it, you will need to chose among the many editions - the one I read had no illustrations but was covered in large, black ink blots (it had been my father's as a school boy) - but my two favourite illustrators are EH Shepherd and Robert Ingpen (see below).

The book follows a loose sequence - everybody has their own favourite section (mine are probably the initial river boating, the Wild Wood, and meeting Badger); and I am averse to some of the Toad sections especially his long farcical prison escape adventure - I usually skip these bits.

The various dramatic and animated versions - such as Toad of Toad Hall by AA Milne - are at a much lower level than the book, and I would not bother with them; although it makes an excellent audio-book when read aloud (by a male voice - Alan Bennet seems to be the favourite).

So, if you haven't already - give it a try. It may stay with you forever.

I've been listening to my penfriend Keri Ford's reading (in his inimitable, fascinating New Zealand dialect!) of John Cowper Powys's early (1915) essay collection Visions and Revisions on the Librivox site:

https://librivox.org/visions-and-revisions-by-john-cowper-powys/

Despite being so early in his oeuvre, this book is full of Powys's typically original and surprising insights (and his craziness, of course); and I have been especially bowled-over by his psychological understanding of Nietzsche - which makes sense of this strange yet compelling philosopher whom I have been reading (off and on, albeit mostly off) for some 35 years.

In a nutshell, Powys sees Nietzche as abnormally sensitive to suffering, and his project as a need to know the worst possible about Life, and to accept it.

So N. put forward and developed a series of ideas that he personally found to be the most horrible and horrifying aspects of his experience. He stated these as truths, explored their implications; then (in effect) Nietzsche challenged himself to accept, and indeed embrace, these distinctively personal horrors as positive Goods.

So, for example, the idea of eternal recurrence - by which every life, every specific event, is (supposedly) recycled and relived again-and-again forever; meant that everything that most horrified Nietzsche could never be coped-with, would become utterly intolerable; unless he was able to embrace it as not merely necessary but positively Good, indeed the best possible.

Ultimately Life as is, Just Is; and we must choose to Love it.

This strikes me as a similar end-point as was reached by Charles Williams in his essay The Cross; although CW reached his view from a 'Platonic' perspective that all time is present at all times, so that the worst that any human has ever suffered is always happening everywhere (e.g. Christ Is Being crucified as you read This; and again Now).

Nietzsche, as well as being a very strange and strangely-driven person; was an extremely rigorous thinker; who took a sadistic delight in following ideas through to unpleasant conclusions. But the sadism was ultimately self-directed - and led to insanity and silence (abetted by syphilis).

The reason N. was and is highly regarded as a philosopher, is that something very much of this kind was a genuine consequence of mainstream classical philosophy and theology; Nietzsche saw, and experienced, this unwelcome truth with absolute lucidity; which in turn (thanks to his unexcelled quality of prose) carries conviction.

The Answer to Nietzsche, as I understand it, is to regard the mainstream as erroneous; and to embrace instead some kind of developmental pluralism (as I have done over the past five plus years).

And this was, indeed, what JC Powys attempted to do, explicitly; although Powys failed to achieve it, and instead got stuck in a failed attempt at reverting to Original Participation*, ultimately because of his rejection of the reality of God as a loving Father and creator; which rejection stemmed from an awareness that this was what he most deeply wanted and knew must be true if his totally-despairing conclusion was to be avoided.

For Nietzsche; the fact that a properly understood Christianity was The Only Possible Answer, was sufficient reason to reject it - since this meant that it was too good to be true+.


*Note: Many Romantics over the past 200 years have attempted to 'revert' to an early childhood/ hunter gatherer state of unconscious, passive, immersive participation in The World - but it is impossible. Or, insofar as it is possible, it cannot be remembered, nor advocated - precisely because it is un-conscious and passive; it entails the obliteration of conscious thinking. People can only get back as far as totemism; which is the earliest and simplest phase of ordinary religion. Totemism (as of Australian Aborigines, or Pacific Northwest Amerindians) is a communal religious practice, that deploys symbols (the totems) and a fixed body of stories about-them; preserved in a ritual oral tradition. Powys describes his personal subjective totemism in considerable detail in his Autobiography. It involved daily observances (eg tapping his forehead against a specific stone, and praying to one of his deities) and extensive propitiation ceremonies (e.g. transferring fish from small drying puddles to larger volumes of water). 'Paradoxically' these imply the early stages of exactly the kind of mainstream, conventional church religion that Powys deplored; those temple religions based on ritual sacrifices designed to placate essentially-malign deities. Similar types of totemism were written about by DH Lawrence. It seems to me that to refuse objective external church Christianity, but advocate subjective individualistic internally-validated totemism, is to jump from the frying pan into the fire. This 'move' fails to solve the main problems of religion and instead exacerbates them, by privatising doctrine and practice.

+ This, in turn, implies that Nietzsche was saved, that he chose Heaven not Hell. Because when, after death, Nietzsche learned that Christianity was really true, not TGTBT, he would certainly have embraced that truth; and done so with a joy and gratitude that we can scarcely imagine.      

Alastair Roberts has posted one of his characteristically thoughtful and wide-ranging Christian essays on this theme - full of interesting stuff, such as:

It is important to recognize that much of the push for the ‘why can’t we just be friends?’ position arises from unusual conditions in contemporary society. In particular, the concern for close interactions between the sexes is often advanced in order to protect women’s equal potential for advancement in institutions and workplaces, where more segregated forms of sociality, or exclusion from the closest interactions with superiors, peers, and mentors would advantage men over women.

However, it is imperative that we recognize that the radical integration of the sexes in the workplace and society is a break with most traditional forms of society. New principles of production and social ordering, built around deracinated and de-particularized androgynous individuals, have steadily paved over more traditional and organic forms of sexed society and displaced the old familial and social order.

Although many workplaces still retain some of the organic segregation of the sexes—largely as a residual effect of the differing typical preferences of the sexes—they increasingly involve working closely for sustained periods of time with persons of the other sex who are not members of our families. We really aren’t mindful of just how radical the development of the unisex workplace is and how disruptive of natural sexed ways of life its demands can be.

The paving over of our natural sociality in the workplace requires us neatly to compartmentalize or separate things that aren’t so easily separated. Sex and power must be neatly detached. Sexed forms of sociality must be suppressed. Our private and professional selves must be compartmentalized, our natural affections and characters from our rule-governed behaviours. Professional relations between the sexes must be scoured of all eros. At work we must operate and treat others as neuters, rather than as sexed persons.

But nature isn’t so easily subdued to our wishes and our society’s desired outcomes are constantly frustrated as a result. For instance, men continue to act and interact in a virile manner that presents obstacles to women’s advancement. They continue to manifest a different form of affinity to and different tendencies in relationship with other men than to and with women. And women, for their part, continue to exhibit more typically feminine forms of sociality, even when these are in some degree of tension with institutions that have been ordered around masculine tendencies.

In a comment he adds:

We face a deep tension between a society ordered around individual careerists and self-realizers in a system ordered by de-particularizing technique and a society ordered around the organic human structures of the disjunction between male and female, differentiated male and female socialities in socially choreographed interactions, marriage and family, the movement from generation to generation, the gravity of place, the household as the integrating unit, etc. If we are to uphold or establish these organic human structures, or restore them even to the most limited degree, it will definitely present restrictive limits for those who seek to live as autonomous careerists or practitioners of technique. These limits will almost certainly be felt more keenly by some than by others. However, where they are lacking, although we may increase our capacity to gain wealth and enjoy more autonomous power, far more important goods are undermined. 

Another matter that comes up in Alastair's essay, reinforced for me the strong rule-of-thumb validity of discerning attitudes to the sexual revolution as a litmus test of Christian seriousness:

Arguments in favour of increased cross-gender friendships should not be dismissed by using ad hominem arguments. However, it is important to register the way in which various of the men who have most prominently advocated for such friendships and encouraged people to be less wary of them have had abusive relations with the other sex, failing to uphold crucial boundaries. They might not be the best examples to follow here.

Hugo Schwyzer, who was once vocal as a highly progressive Christian, wrote a piece in The Atlantic, praising Christians advocating for friendships between men and women. A few years later, we all discovered that he had been sleeping with his students, with porn stars, and with other women whose trust and friendship he had exploited.

John Howard Yoder advanced a bold theory of ‘non-genital affective relationships’ between the sexes. The Church should be a radical new community, where the fact that we are truly brothers and sisters allows for affectionate touching and physical contact between the sexes, contact that would be erotically charged outside of the Church, but which familiarity should enable us to overcome. Yoder’s own ‘experiment’ in non-sexual touching involved him touching or making advances on over fifty different women who came to him as a mentor, authority figure, or friend.

This reminded me of my shock, and disgust, on discovering that (the Inkling) Charles Williams's approval of non-consummative sexual contact among an early Christian sect (described in The Descent of the Dove) rationalised his own (non-Christian) practice of arousing and redirecting sexual energy from (mild but creepy) sado-masochistic riutuals with young women/ disciples, in order to energise his poetry...

Read the whole thing at Alastair's Adversaria.

*

I am re-reading, for something like the fifth time, The Place of the Lion (PotL) by Charles Williams

http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks06/0601441.txt

Several previous re-readings - and yet I had the experience of reading the chapter The Two Camps as if I had not seen it before. It seemed to throw light, indirectly, on the distinction between Platonism and Christianity.

*

PotL is a spiritual thriller about the Platonic archetypes 'invading' this world, and reabsorbing all the entities, including people, over which they have primary influence.

For instance, a woman who is primarily snake-like gradually becomes a snake, and would be reabsorbed by the snake archetype.

If the process was to continue to completion then this world - a imperfect world of change, decay, corruption - a world of Time - would be reabsorbed by the eternal and unchanging world of forms.

*

In a chapter called The Two Camps there is a discussion between Foster who sees this resorption as 'a good thing' - and who is himself joyfully being reabsorbed by the lion archetype en route to complete assimilation; and the hero Anthony who wants to stop the destruction of 'this world' of Time and people.

Foster says that there is only one choice: to acknowledge, accept, and enjoy resorption into the archetypes, or misguidedly to resist it - in which case one will be hunted by the archetype, which will inevitably track you down and overpower you. (This almost happens to Quentin.)

The choice, for Forster, is therefore between enlightened cooperation, and an ignorant and futile resistance. He regards the archetypal world as obviously superior in its perfection, and - anyway - overwhelmingly stronger than any creature, any human.

*

Anthony understand this but he nonetheless intends to try and stop and reverse the archetypal takeover, and save this (corrupt, decaying, tragic) world.

Anthony's reason is essentially - but not at all explicitly - Christian: he wants to save the world essentially because of his love for his 'girlfriend' Damaris and his best friend Quentin.

Anthony wants to save the world because of love for specific individual persons and their individual consciousness - albeit these persons are temporary, flawed, corrupt and all the rest.

Anthony does not want these people absorbed-into and extinguished-by 'perfect' eternal archetypes of vast power - because that would be an end of that which he loves.

In essence Anthony perceives some necessary value in individual human life in this world of Time.

*

Christianity contains much Platonism, and Platonism is a wonderful thing - the best philosophy. But without Christianity, Platonism has no place for individual persons, no need for this world in Time.

For a Platonist, the soul is the person, the body a decaying encumbrance - there is no good reason to be alive in this world once one has understood reality and can agree to assimilation to it. This world in time is like a mistake - it is just a temporary delay en route to static eternal bliss.

Christianity is about incarnate God, God with a body, who came into this world of time and change as an individual Man: Christianity thus validates this world, and validates individual Man, and validates the body (without which Man is incomplete - hence Christians believe in the need and reality of  'the resurrection of the body' - restoring the body to the soul).

Christianity thus regards this world as vital, and as a forum for love of firstly the individually incarnate God and secondly other individual incarnate persons.

*

Thus Anthony's attitude is Christian, while Foster's is Platonist; and the contrast shows the problem with pure, non-Christian Platonism - that Platonism is inhuman, anti-human, anti-life-itself.

For a Platonist, the quicker we can get-out from individual conscious life in Time, and become absorbed into eternity with annihilation of consciousness, the better.

And what stands between us and this is firstly: love of God incarnate as a Man, on earth and in Time; and secondly love of neighbour, love of other specific individual persons.

*


NOTE: I am not against Platonism, far from it; I am myself a Platonist - because in the first place it is more-or-less built in to Christian theology; and also because when subordinated to Christian theology Platonism allows some kind of comprehensible and rational answer to many vexing pseudo-problems of theology such as prayers for the dead, salvation of ancient virtuous pagans, prophets, and children. In a nutshell, the Platonism of Boethius - to about that level and extent - is of great value to intellectuals who are better at coming-up with questions than answering them. It was and is, I think, the loss of Platonism from Christian theology that led to many of the worst aspects of the Reformation and the consequent continuing fragmentation of The Church. It is noteworthy that the greatest cross-denominational Christian apologist of the past century - C.S. Lewis - was himself very much a Platonist, as can be seen in his book The Discarded Image - indeed all through his work. 

*